A book a day: Marguerite Yourcenar: Opus Nigrum

Original title: The black work

Translation: Emma Calatayud

Year of publication: 1974

Valuation: Highly recommended high

Ugh, how to start with this. Well, straight to the point: as Delibes would say, the shadow of the cypress is long, and if you have the ability to have written Memoirs of Hadrian, I’m very sorry, mate, but from then on all your work will be measured by that standard; not having set the bar so high. And it is not a bad novel at all, quite the opposite; For example, a beautiful simile taken directly from the first page: “peace […] “It was already beginning to fray like a suit worn for a long time.”.

Perhaps this review would have been different if I had not read the great work of Yourcenar, but if the Memories Maybe I would never have read this book – the historical novel is not exactly my favorite genre -. Furthermore, in my case, I have recently read Baudolino, by Umberto Eco, a novel with which parallels could easily be established: both are books starring medieval characters invented on purpose – whose story is told to us from the cradle to the scaffold – who travel through the Europe of their time, and, to To top it all off, both novels happen to be a “minor” part of their authors’ work. So the thing is about comparisons.

Black work It is about the life of Zeno, a polymath – doctor, philosopher, theologian, writer, alchemist, astrologer, fluent in several languages… – from the 16th century that Yourcenar uses as a pretext to display enormous erudition and vast historical knowledge. The protagonist, an amalgam of Da Vinci, Servetus, Paracelsus, Erasmus, Brahe… is born as a bastard son into a wealthy family and dedicates his life to traveling through Europe practicing medicine.

Zenón is the ideal vehicle for Yourcenar to show us the different realities of the Middle Ages of the 16th century: as a doctor with a wealthy background, he attended to kings and queens and had access to their courts; As a sullen and disenchanted character, he acts as a good Samaritan and dedicates himself to being the doctor of the poor, thanks to which we know the stories of ordinary people. His scientific knowledge tells us about the progress and state of various sciences of the time; His mechanical skill shows us a brief episode of proto-Luddism and what today we would call the union movement and class consciousness.

On the other hand, regarding his personality, he is a supporter of a nihilistic humanism (that’s what I would call it today) that highlights the contradictions and internal struggles of Christianity at the time, as well as his own. In a good connoisseur of human nature, and his treatment with different ecclesiastical personnel – also of different class and rank: friars, novices, bishops – the exchange of ideas is one of the best things in the novel.

However, and here comes the but, the inevitable comparison, there is no evolution in the character: in the first chapter of the novel he already displays his character and his convictions, and these never change, nor do they waver or show any fissure. throughout the entire novel, from adolescent to old man, despite all the experiences lived. He is a fairly flat character who, despite being objectively a good person in a world full of beasts, is difficult to empathize with. He lacks the psychological depth that Yourcenar reserved for Hadrian; This novel is more about events than characters – there is an almost total absence of secondary characters, who only exist through the interaction with Zenón (the rhyme is worth it) – where the true protagonism does not fall on the human being, but on the story of Europe. This is something that took me quite a few pages to understand, perhaps my expectations were more in the other direction.

It is true that the best of the novel are the long exchanges that Zenón and his respective companions, expressly arranged for that role, have: his cousin, the prior, his former teacher… it is in these dialogues where the best comes out. of the book, where Zeno tells us about his internal world, his cosmogonic vision and his vital philosophy, and where his subject functions as a representative of another theory, depending on the topic to be discussed, whether vital, human or theological. Zenón doesn’t handle banal talk, I wouldn’t like to meet him in the elevator.

What I would have liked was for these characters to develop more and have their own story, not just be the consequence of the solipsistic conception of the work. It would have enriched the overall mosaic.

It should be said that, at least in my edition, the book has a final part, now detached from the narrative, in which the author tells us about the conception of the novel and its history. For my part, I very much appreciate these annexes that tell us about literary creation and give explanations about the historical context, so point in favor. They help me enjoy the novel more.

I don’t want to spoil any more than necessary about this appendix, but let me mention that, according to Yourcenar herself, Memoirs of Hadrian y Black work They started from a common origin, so making a comparison between the two might not be such a bad idea.

In these final pages Yourcenar also tells us that “Boschian and Breughelian themes of disorder and horror in the world abound in the work”: as a fan of both painters, I could not agree more.

A novel, despite everything, very good, which in a few years will have to be reread, by then no longer in the spirit of comparison.